


Of Night and Light and Half Light

by mystivy



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:14:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2557631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystivy/pseuds/mystivy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Wimbledon 2014.  When paparazzi in Mallorca get photos of Rafa kissing another man, he is hounded by the media in his home.  Roger has a solution to offer, which results in a realisation that's been a long time coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Night and Light and Half Light

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to my betas, Horizon Greene and Alex for their feedback on this. Their suggestions and comments really got me writing again when I was stuck and they both helped improve the story significantly. Thank you both. <3
> 
> The first part of the initial interview is from the post-Wimbledon final presser transcript.

**Sunday 6 July 2014 – Wimbledon Gentlemen’s Singles Final  
Roger Federer talks to the media following his 6-7(7), 6-4, 7-6(4), 5-7, 6-4 defeat to Novak Djokovic**

**Q. What is the most positive thing that you bring back home after a final like this: The fact that you're physically fit again, no problems with the back? You served fantastic?**

**ROGER FEDERER:** You know, I think that's it. To be able to play consistent great solid tennis with some really nice things to look back on, you know. Good emotions again, even though it was rough at the end clearly. Very happy to see that I can do it week for week, match for match, you know, point for point. It's all right there. It's been a very positive last couple of weeks for me when I won Halle as well. I'm looking very much toward a vacation and working out hard again to get myself in shape for the American summer.

**Q. You have a positive attitude in the match. You did lose, but you lost on your own terms in a way because you kept coming in and you tried to create opportunities. Do you feel like that?**

**ROGER FEDERER:** Yeah, I did feel that way. You know, I mean, I think Novak tried as much as he could to play offensive, as well. I don't think he can play much more offensive than he did, and still I felt like he was on the edge of things, as well. So from that standpoint I'm very pleased with the way things went throughout the match, you know. So I thought it was a high quality match and it was good stuff from both players out there. I think clearly we both walk away happy from here. I mean, him more happy than I am. But still, I'm happy overall.

**Q. On another note, have you seen the photos posted today online of Rafael Nadal? And if you have, does it surprise you?**

**ROGER FEDERER:** I haven’t seen anything online today. I had a match I kind of had to focus on, you know.

**Q. Well, some photos were published online today that seem to show Nadal kissing another man. I was just wondering if you had any reaction to that.**

**ROGER FEDERER:** Um… no. No, I have no comment on that.

 

He imagined something vague, some blurry photo of men silhouetted against sunlight, impossible to really make out what was occurring between them. Or some dim night photo, pixelated, suggestive but nothing more. He doesn’t expect clear, telescopic-lens photos that show the curl of Rafa’s knuckles against a man’s hips, the press of their mouths, their soft, dreamy expressions in the dapple of sunlight reflected from the Mediterranean Sea.

“Is that Marc Lopez?” asks Mirka. She removes an earring and places it on the bedside table beside the baby monitor.

“I think it is, yeah,” he replies. His eyes run down the slight spread of Rafa’s legs, the way he accommodates Lopez between his thighs.

“I’m surprised he kissed him out in the open like that,” says Mirka. She folds her blouse and places it in a mostly-full suitcase, smoothing it down against the rest of the clothes. “He’s usually so much more careful.”

“Mmmm,” agrees Roger. Rafa’s mouth is open, soft. They are pressed together chest to chest. “I don’t think he expects this when he’s home.”

“Yeah, it’s shitty for him,” says Mirka. “I mean, especially that this happened in Mallorca.”

“He’ll be devastated.” 

She has her hand on the door to the ensuite but she stops and turns to look at him. “You were right not to say anything today.”

“I wouldn’t,” says Roger. “It’s none of my business.”

“No,” she says. “I guess not.” She goes into the bathroom. He can hear through the slightly open door the run of water, the buzz of an electric toothbrush, the snaps and screwtops of her products and the heavy clink of glass jars on the marble surface. Roger stretches out his legs beneath the sheets, still aching a little after the five-set final, and swipes this way and that through the photos published by the Mail Online. It’s Rafa’s smile that strikes him in one photo, where he has his forehead pressed to Marc’s, and the flex of his biceps in another as he holds him in his arms. He notices how their fingers tangle together in loose, familiar ways.

“It is your business, though, a little,” says Mirka, coming back into the bedroom. She draws the ensuite door closed behind her and flicks off the light. “He’s still in love with you.”

Roger tries to smile as if he’s shrugging off the idea. “I don’t think so,” he says. “You should see the way he’s looking at Marc in these photos.”

“I’ve seen,” she says, getting into bed beside him. “And sure, he’s very fond of him, but he’s still in love with you.”

It hangs in the air like something ineluctable between them, and they gaze at each other through it as if through a sheet of glass. Finally Roger shrugs and looks away, saying, “It doesn’t matter.”

He closes the cover on the iPad and puts in on the bedside table. When he turns off the light and lies down, she curls into him, her head on his shoulder and her arm across his chest. After a little time, her breathing evens out and she falls asleep.

Even this late in the evening, faint, grey fans of light still spread across the ceiling from the chinks along the top of the curtains. Roger stares at them blankly, his mind flooded with Mediterranean sunshine and Rafa’s bronzed, athletic body. He follows the curve of his ass with his mind, presses ghost fingers into strong, hard muscles. He imagines spreading Rafa out on a cool, white sheet and tracing every plane and angle with his tongue. He imagines the taste of his mouth, the heat of his body, the silky skin of his cock. He imagines bending him over and fucking him until all he can do is call Roger’s name.

Mirka shifts against him and Roger guiltily presses the heel of his hand against his half-rising cock. He slides out from between the sheets and she turns over without waking. He pads quietly out to the landing and downstairs to the kitchen and gropes along the countertop for a bottle of water. He sits on the couch and drinks it slowly, willing himself away from the precipice over which he longs to fling himself headlong. He can’t allow daydreams, or night dreams, or any imagined or recollected sensation of Rafa. There is too great a danger of intoxication.

 

Mirka finds him there in the morning. “Did you sleep here?” she asks, hunkered down in front of him. At some point during the night he had slid to a lying position and pulled down the blanket from the back of the couch to cover himself.

Roger rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. He pushes himself to sitting. “I guess so,” he says. He’s still a little dazed with sleep.

“Why?” she asks, half smiling, half confused.

He laughs a little. “I don’t know,” he says. “I came out for a bottle of water…” It’s nearly empty on the coffee table in front of him. Suddenly he has to piss.

“The boys are waking up,” says Mirka, holding up the monitor. Snuffles are intermittently becoming cries. “But you should go to bed, get more sleep. It’s only five thirty.”

“Will you be okay on your own?” he says.

“I’ll call Nina.” She puts her hand on his knee. “Now seriously. You had a long match yesterday. Go to bed, get some proper rest.”

He kisses her chastely on the mouth. “Thanks,” he says. “What time are we leaving?”

“I’ll wake you in time,” she says. “Just go to sleep.”

The bedroom is silent. Outside the open window the morning is grey and scattered with fragments of birdsong, as if not even the birds can be sure the sun has risen behind the thick blanket of cloud. Roger flicks on the ensuite light and pisses and flushes and washes his hands. He splashes water on his face and stares at himself in the mirror. He has dark circles under his eyes and he looks pale and washed out. He shakes his head and presses a towel to his face. “Forget it,” he tells himself. “Forget about all of it.” He pads back into the bedroom and falls into bed, squirming under the sheets. It’s still warm where Mirka lay. He lies where it’s warmest and falls asleep, and if he dreams, they are not dreams he later remembers.

 

“Roger,” says Tony Godsick that afternoon at the airport. It’s a private airfield outside of London, one of the few big enough to handle Lear jets. “Take it easy. See you in a couple of weeks, yeah?” 

“Sure,” says Roger. “Hey!” he calls to the girls, who are running up the steps to the jet. “Slow down!” 

Tony smiles and waves at them, and at Severin Luthi, who is shepherding them inside. “You read more about the Rafa stuff?” he says to Roger.

“Yeah.” Roger shifts his jacket from one arm to the other. It’s a close, muggy day. “What do you think they’ll do?”

“I’m sure Benito is already working on it,” says Tony. “They’ll probably start with a press release, a request for privacy, and then they’ll work out what the best story should be.”

“Like how to explain Xisca?”

“Exactly. That’s always tough, explaining the beard when everything goes tits up.” He shakes his head. “Have you heard about Ian Thorpe?”

“The swimmer?” Roger shakes his head. “No, what about him?”

“He’s going to come out at the end of the week. Apparently the interview has already been taped with Michael Parkinson.”

“Wow,” says Roger. “Well, good for him.” Mirka and Nina are carrying the boys in their carriers to the plane. The driver is closing the trunk of the car and getting ready to leave. “Do you think Rafa will do that?”

Tony shrugs. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s all he can do, to be honest.”

“I guess,” says Roger.

“Listen, you were right to make no comment yesterday. If anyone asks you again, keep making no comment.” Tony is in business mode, hand on his hip, his face serious behind his Ray Bans. “I mean, say what you like about him as a player, as a friend, as a colleague, you know, that sort of thing. But no comment on the Lopez thing.”

“Colleague, right,” says Roger, laughing a little.

“You know what I mean, Roger.” Tony pats him on the arm. “You’re always good at dealing with tricky questions.”

“Okay.” Everyone’s on board now except for Roger. He can see the cabin attendant waiting around in the shadow inside the doorway at the top of the steps. On the other side of the hangar, on the small runway, a Cessna is taxiing into position for take-off. Someone’s hobby plane. He thinks of his girls, growing up as familiar with a Lear jet as they are with a car. They probably already have their seatbelts on and their books on the table in front of them. “Hey, I guess I better go. Thanks, Tony. Have a good time at home.”

“Sure thing, Roger. See you in a couple of weeks.” He heads back to the car and waves before he closes the door. Roger climbs up the steps into the plane.

He sits opposite Mirka. They each have one of the boys’ carriers strapped in the seats beside them. “Everything okay?” says Mirka.

“Yeah,” says Roger. “Did you know Ian Thorpe is coming out later this week on TV?”

“The swimmer?” she says. “Huh. Well, good for him.” She’s distracted. Lenny is fussing a little, his voice catching in momentary cries now and then. Mirka holds his soother to his mouth, trying to encourage him to take it. “Here you go, little boy,” she says.

“Do you think it might, I don’t know…” He trails away and she looks up at him, pushing her hair behind her ear. The plane has started taxiing to the runway.

“What?” she says.

“Do you think it might make it easier for Rafa?”

“Come on, Lenny, it’s okay. We’re just on a plane.” He calms for a moment and takes the soother before spitting it out again. “Sorry?” she says to Roger.

“Nothing, it doesn’t matter,” says Roger. “Is he okay?”

“I don’t know,” she says. He finally takes the soother and sucks on it hard. “That should help him with the pressure.”

“Yeah,” says Roger. He sits back and looks at Leo. He’s fast asleep in his carrier with a pale yellow blanket tucked around him. He runs a finger over a chubby baby cheek. “You’re okay, aren’t you, little man?” he says. Mirka glances up at him and smiles.

They feed the boys somewhere over France and then, above the mountains coming into Geneva, they tuck them in again. Myla and Charlene are tired and impatient and whine for attention until they have to buckle their seatbelts for landing. Roger swaps seats with his mother for the last twenty minutes of the flight and that mollifies them somewhat.

They reach the apartment in Basel around nine in the evening, and that night he lies in his own bed and sleeps dreamlessly. He wakes with Mirka to feed the boys at four in the morning and then they sleep again until eight thirty, knowing Nina will take the morning feeding. Mirka stretches against him in the dim, curtained light and Roger takes her in his arms and sinks into her. It’s slow and warm and lazy, and afterwards he holds her and sighs contentedly against her hair.

It’s only later, flicking through his iPad at breakfast, that he notices an email from Tony Godsick. “Thought you’d be interested” it says in the subject line. The girls are racing around the kitchen and he calls to them to be careful not to bump their heads into the counter top before he opens the email.

> _Roger, Benito’s press release. Thought you’d be interested in keeping up in case you’re asked about it at any point. We’ve already received a few requests for comment here but we’re ignoring them of course. Talk soon – TG._

Beneath the message is a standard press release saying exactly what Tony had expected – a request for privacy, an attempt to focus on Rafa’s upcoming practice for the American hard court swing. Not a word about Marc Lopez or really any indication that the pap photos are an issue. But when he opens Safari and does a search for Rafael Nadal, the photos are among the first to come up. And more: photos of Rafa at his house, driving through Manacor in his car, and mobbed by paparazzi at the tennis club. Toni is in them too, and Rafa Maymo, the whole team forming a phalanx around him as he tries to go to practice. But there’s no escape from the clamour of reporters and photographers. Roger can see that Rafa is suffocating.

He slips his phone from his back pocket. He means to send a text, something supportive and friendly, but then he hits “Call” instead. He listens to the ringing on the other end for long enough that he’s wondering what to say in a voicemail, but then Rafa picks up.

“Hola, Roger,” he says. He sounds tired.

“Hey, Raf,” replies Roger. There’s silence for a moment. He hadn’t really thought beyond hearing Rafa’s voice. Around him the girls are shouting to each other in some raucous game and Nina is calling them to clean up for a snack. “Hold on a sec,” he says to Rafa. He retreats upstairs, into Mirka’s study, and shuts the door. He sits down on the leather chair. “Sorry,” he says. “A lot of kids around, you know?”

Rafa laughs a little. “I hear them,” he says. “How are the babies?”

“They’re well,” says Roger. “They’re really good. They’re asleep now, probably. I forgot how much they sleep when they’re so young.”

“That’s good.” He sounds like he’s smiling a little, which makes Roger unexpectedly relieved. “Anyway, I think that’s good, no?”

“Yeah, it’s good,” says Roger. He smiles too. “How are you, Rafa? Are you good?”

He can hear the slight hesitation. “I am okay,” he says. “Things are… different.”

“Yeah. I guess they are.” Roger scratches at a tiny white mark on his jeans with his fingernail. “I mean, I saw the photos with all the paparazzi.”

Rafa sighs into his phone and it sounds like a hiss. “They are everywhere, no? I can’t go outside. Is not normal in Mallorca for so many paparazzi to be near me.”

“I know,” says Roger. “It’s shit for you.”

“Yes,” says Rafa. “Is shit.”

“Are you with your family?”

“Sí,” says Rafa. “Is all I can do now, be with the family. Is fine, no? But is difficult to practice.”

“Rafa,” says Roger. An idea has occurred to him, and he finds himself saying it before he even thinks it through. “Why don’t you come here?”

“Què?” says Rafa, and Roger can imagine the deep, bemused frown on his face.

“Bring your team. Stay in our house in Herrliberg. There’s a hardcourt. I mean, I know it’s not the same as practising in Manacor, but at least it’s a place to practice, you know?”

“You are serious, Roger?” Roger thinks maybe Rafa is pacing, now, at the other end of the phone. He can hear the rhythmic catch of breath as he strides. “Don’t you need your house? Your tennis court?”

“We can go to our place in Valbella,” says Roger. “I have a court there too.”

There is silence on the other end. It’s no longer punctuated with the sound of steps. Rafa is quiet. Maybe he’s looking out at the sea, thinks Roger. Maybe he’s wondering if he can leave his island. Maybe he’s looking out at the paparazzi.

“Rafa,” says Roger. “You could get away from all the craziness, you know?” He picks at his jeans again, absently realising it’s not a drop of yoghurt from breakfast but a small spot of white threads clustered together. “I’ll send the jet. No one has to know you’re here.”

More silence. Suddenly, coldly, Roger wonders if Rafa isn’t thinking about the sea or the island or the paparazzi. Maybe he doesn’t want to leave Marc.

“Roger,” says Rafa. “This is really okay?”

“You’ll come?” says Roger. “It’s really okay.”

“I’ll talk to Toni,” says Rafa.

“Okay.” Roger suddenly imagines the incongruity of Toni Nadal in his house among the mountains. The image of any of Rafa’s beach-bronzed team in the green Swiss valley in which his house is nestled is jarring, as if he has suggested transplanting sea creatures to a meadow, expecting them to thrive.

“I’ll call you later, yes? And tell you?”

“Sure,” says Roger.

“And Roger,” says Rafa. Roger can hear that he’s smiling again. “Thank you.”

“Hey,” says Roger. “It’s no problem, really.”

They are both silent for a moment, until Rafa speaks. “Thanks anyway,” he says. “I will call you later.”

“Okay,” says Roger. “Talk to you then.”

“Adios,” says Rafa, and then he’s gone.

Roger ends the call and presses the cold edge of his phone against his mouth. Down below, the lake is calm, as depthless and blue as the sky. The Alps rise behind it in slopes of lush summer green, roads zig-zagging through the trees to houses dotted on the mountainside. The house in Herrliberg is on a slope like that, on a vast site clustered round with trees. The house is still new, so new they’ve hardly moved into it yet. It’s spacious enough for Rafa’s whole team to live in the main house and the guesthouse together.

“Roger?” says Mirka, opening the door. “Hey. What’s up? You look miles away.” She puts her hands on his shoulders and kisses the top of his head.

“I was just talking to Rafa,” he says, looking up at her. “He’s going crazy with the paparazzi in Mallorca.”

“Mmm, I bet,” says Mirka. She leans against the desk.

“So I said he could come and stay in the house in Herrliberg.”

“What?” she says.

“You know, he can stay there with his team, and no one would know. He’d be able to practice. No paparazzi.”

She crosses her arms and looks at him like she’s trying to figure something out. “Right,” she says. “I thought we were going to start moving in.”

“I know,” says Roger. “I thought we could just go back to Valbella for now. Then we can move in after New York.” He sighs and puts his phone down on the desk. “I know I should have checked with you first. I’m sorry. Anyway, he hasn’t said he’ll definitely come. He has to talk to Toni.”

She’s looking at him as if she’s waiting for something to click into place. “I suppose we can move in in the autumn,” she says. 

“Yeah,” says Roger. “And my parents will be in Valbella, so they can help with the kids when I go to practice.”

“Okay,” says Mirka. She nods.

“Okay.”

“Hey,” she says, leaning forward and kissing him again, this time on the cheek. “It was really good of you to want to help him out.”

Roger shrugs. “It would drive me crazy, if it was me,” he says.

 

That evening, Rafa calls and says he’ll come. The next day Roger drives to a private airfield outside of Zurich, where he’s arranged two cars for Rafa’s team. “Hey, come with me,” he says to Rafa, directing him to his Mercedes. Rafa looks grim, the weight of the past few days dimming his smile. He casts his eyes over the bare apron of the airfield before getting into Roger’s car. “Don’t worry,” says Roger. “No one will see you.”

Rafa sighs, the tension in his shoulders easing out a little when he looks at Roger. “I hope,” he says.

“Any paparazzi at Palma?” Roger eases the car out onto the autoroute towards Zurich.

“Oh, yes,” says Rafa. He has his elbow up on the car door and is covering the view of his face with his hand. The brim of his hat is pulled down low. “Many photographers and TV reporters. All of them ask me where am I going, where am I going?” He shakes his head.

“Imagine they knew,” says Roger, and he flashes a smile over at Rafa. It’s enough to clear the annoyance from Rafa’s face. He laughs a little.

“They would be surprised, I think.” He lets his elbow drop from the door.

“Yeah,” says Roger. “I think they would.”

The traffic is light and it doesn’t take long to reach the suburbs of Zurich. Roger points out various sights along the way, and when they get to the road out along the lake towards Herrliberg, Rafa gazes out across the water. “It’s beautiful,” he says.

“Colder than your sea, I bet,” says Roger.

“Yes, I think so,” replies Rafa. He’s smiling at last. He stretches out his left hand, fingers delicately splayed, and rests it against his thigh. Roger finds himself acutely aware of Rafa’s physical presence, his slightly spread legs, the strength of the muscles under his jeans.

He takes a left up towards Herrliberg, turning off the main road as they climb the slope. He focuses on the road, now, on the gear shifts required on the hills, on the curves and switchbacks up the mountainside. “The house isn’t far,” he says. “It’s new, you know? We built it this year. They’ve just finished the planting.” 

“Do you live there yet?” asks Rafa. 

“No,” says Roger. “It’s furnished but we haven’t moved in.”

“So I will be here before you in your house?”

Roger glances at him, his soft face, his deep, brown eyes, his open expression. “Yeah,” he says. “We’re going to be in Valbella. My parents live there, too. It’s where we’ve lived for years.”

“Valbella. Is it far from here?”

Roger shrugs. “About an hour and a half,” he says. 

“Oh, so long?” Rafa sounds disappointed.

“We’d stay closer but I have no tennis court at the apartment,” says Roger. He indicates left and turns into the arc of a large gateway. “Here we are,” he says. He pushes a button on a fob and the two solid wooden gates open inwards. They open to a view up the driveway towards a low, modern house constructed of concrete volumes and walls of glass. 

Rafa whistles. “Wow,” he says. “Beautiful.”

“Thanks,” says Roger. The trees that surround the house and protect it from view are mature replants, already settled nicely into the ground. As soon as the gates close behind the last car, they are in an oasis of green. “The court is around the back,” says Roger. “And the pool.”

He drives the car into the car port and pulls to a stop. The two other cars pull up behind him. The whole team has come: Toni, of course, and Rafa Maymo, Carlos Costa, Jordi Robert and Benito Perez Barbadillo. They pile the luggage just inside the door and wander into the house.

“Roger,” says Toni, grasping Roger’s hand in a handshake. “Thank you very much for this.”

“No problem, Toni,” says Roger. Toni gives him a serious nod of acknowledgement.

The house gives the impression of smoothly finished geometric volumes colliding unexpectedly to suggest rooms and spaces. The wide open living room area is surrounded by glass, furnished in deep brown leather and dark polished wood. “The kitchen is through here,” says Roger, leading the way towards the back of the house to a wide open kitchen with doors through to the rear garden. “There’s food here for today,” Roger continues, opening the fridge. “I got you prawns. Not as good as prawns in Mallorca, I know, but hopefully they’re okay.”

Rafa is smiling now for real, his earlier tension melting away. “Roger, I think this is too much,” he says, but Roger can see he’s happy.

“Tomorrow, Alessandra will be here to clean, and she’ll go to the store to get you anything you need. She’ll come every day.” Roger continues around the kitchen, showing Rafa the pasta and rice, the breakfast cereal, the bread and the Nutella. He shows him the plates and mugs and cutlery, and how to operate the compactor bin and the dishwasher. “Alessandra will do your laundry, too, if you leave it out for her,” he says.

“This Alessandra, you know her?” asks Rafa.

“Yeah,” says Roger. “We can trust her.”

“Okay,” says Rafa.

The rest of the team have wandered elsewhere, into the living room and upstairs to the bedrooms. Roger can hear them calling things to each other from various parts of the house. “I’ll show you the guesthouse too,” he says to Roger. “I don’t know who you want sleeping there. Would Toni like it?”

“Maybe I’ll sleep there,” says Rafa. He’s leaning against the island countertop, his arms folded.

“Really?” says Roger. “By yourself out there? That’s not like you.”

Rafa sighs. “I feel…” He gestures with his hand as if he’s combing the air for the right words. “Everything is very loud,” he says. “Maybe for a while I don’t mind the quiet.”

Roger nods. “Come on, then,” he says. “I’ll show you the way.”

He leads Rafa down a staircase to the basement, indicating the cellar that has yet to be stocked with wine and the geothermal plant room. At one end of the basement is a glass-roofed tunnel. He opens the door at the other end and shows Rafa into the guesthouse.

The living room has the same feel of clean, open space as the main house, with a small kitchen forming part of the back wall. He leads Rafa through to the large bedroom. There is a view out over the garden towards Lake Zurich, and beyond that, the mountains stretch south until they’re lost in a blue haze. “Look,” says Roger, clicking a hidden catch in the glass wall and sliding back a section. He brings Rafa out to the terrace. Outside, the air is piny and laden with the smell of loamy soil laid in their sprawling garden. A storm is swelling in dark, heavy clouds over the mountains. 

Roger rests his hands on the wooden rail that edges the terrace. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”

“Sí,” says Rafa. “Very beautiful.” He takes a deep breath, inhaling the smells of the valley.

Roger points out the mesh fence beyond a stretch of trees. “That’s the court,” he says. “You’ll find your way down there from the deck outside the kitchen.”

“I think yes, I will sleep here,” says Rafa. He looks back into the bedroom, to its dark woods and pale walls, its low, wide bed. 

“Good decision,” says Roger.

Back in the house, the team have left their luggage in the bedrooms and Rafa Maymo is setting up his physio bed in the living room. Someone has lined up Rafa’s racket bag and gear bag by the wall.

“Okay,” says Roger. “I’ll let you guys settle in. Rafa, call me if you need anything, okay?”

“Sure,” says Rafa. He takes Roger’s hand and hugs him, hooking his chin over Roger’s shoulder for one brief moment. “Gracias, Roger,” he says, low and genuine.

“Seriously,” says Roger. “It’s no problem.”

“Hey, come back for dinner, maybe tomorrow?” says Rafa.

Roger nods. “Okay, sounds good,” he says. “Have a good evening settling in, guys.” Then he turns to the door and, with one smile back over his shoulder, he leaves.

He has a sense that it should feel strange to leave them in the house, but it doesn’t. He hasn’t lived there himself yet, and though he met with the architects and decided on the render and the floor finish and all the furnishings, it still feels like something chosen from a catalogue, something as yet unfamiliar. Somehow Rafa being there makes it feel more like a home. By now Mirka and the kids would all have arrived in Valbella, so that’s where Roger heads. It’s a long drive, and as he follows the road he turns on the radio and flicks around till he finds a station playing a song he recognises. The clouds are creeping down among the trees as the evening light dims. There is electricity in the air, the crackle of an impending storm. Rain splashes on the windscreen in fat drops that catch the light of passing cars. The metronomic sweep of wipers sets Roger’s mind adrift. He hears the rhythm of the court in their steady beat.

 

The storm breaks over the mountains in the small hours of the morning and the next day is clear. The deep blue of mountain skies is unbroken from ridge to ridge, and the only remnant of the night’s violence is rain-sodden ground. Roger waits for the water to evaporate off the court and hits for an hour out in the fresh, clean air of the summer Alps. “Rafa asked me over for dinner,” he says later to Mirka.

“Already?” she says.

“You know how he loves to cook,” says Roger. He’s drinking a bottle of water in the kitchen. Nina is cleaning up the girls’ afternoon snack things at the sink, her shoulders a little taut. Maybe she picked up the same brittle tone in Mirka’s voice as he did.

“No,” replies Mirka. “I didn’t know that he loves to cook.”

“Oh.” He replaces the cap on the bottle. Nina empties the sink and leaves the dishes to drain. She calls for the girls as she leaves the room.

“I mean, it just seems soon, that’s all,” she says. “You just drove all the way there and back yesterday.” Her palms are resting on the island countertop, her fingertips curled under.

“You’re tired,” he says to her. 

“A little,” she says.

“I’ll do the four a.m. tonight,” he says. “You sleep.”

“Okay.” She looks a little relieved. 

“I’ll probably be back from Herrliberg late anyway. You know how Spaniards like to eat late.”

“Oh,” she says. 

“What?”

“I just thought that meant you wouldn’t go. I mean, doing the four a.m. after all that driving.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Her hands curl tighter and her knuckles turn white. “Okay,” she says. “Good.” She turns to leave the kitchen. “You probably need to go soon, then. Drive carefully.”

He doesn’t have to go too soon. He spends half an hour with the boys, playing with them on their playmats, before he gets up to change clothes. Jeans, a shirt. Then kisses against soft baby hair, hugs from the girls. “Say hi for me,” says Mirka, as he leaves.

 

The day fades to twilight early in the mountains, and when he turns up the drive his headlights sweep across the front of the house. It’s the first time Roger has seen it at night and he stops for a moment, the engine still running, headlights on the door. The house’s soft volumes are aglow with a warm light, and it seems as if the air around it is humming with life. He can see Jordi in the living room, standing with one hand on his hip, talking intently to someone unseen. When Roger steps out of the car, he can hear music from an open window upstairs.

“Roger,” says Rafa Maymo, when he opens the door. His elfin eyes are guarded, as usual, but he smiles a little and ushers Roger inside. He says something in Spanish and Benito, standing up from the couch, translates.

“He says it’s strange to welcome you to your own home,” he says, reaching out a hand for Roger to shake.

“Well, it’s nice to be welcomed,” says Roger.

Benito translates back to Rafa Maymo, who nods, pressing his lips together in acknowledgement. Then he crooks a thumb over his shoulder and says something that Roger can understand. “Rafael està a la cuina.”

“Of course he is,” says Roger, heading towards the kitchen. “Oh my god,” he says, leaning against the jamb of the wide kitchen door. “That smells amazing.”

There’s something in the way Rafa looks up at him and smiles that makes Roger think maybe he had heard him arrive and he’d waited for him here, the light from the cooker hood falling on his tanned arms, his t-shirt rumpling at his waist, just over his jeans. He’s frying prawns and garlic in rich olive oil. Roger goes to him and they clasp hands and hug.

“Roger,” says Rafa. His grip is tight on Roger’s hand.

“Hey, Raf,” says Roger. It’s only then that he notices Toni sitting in a stool at the breakfast bar. “Toni,” he says, and Toni nods in response.

“You like prawns and pasta,” says Rafa, more a statement than a question.

“Sure,” says Roger. “You like my kitchen?”

Rafa laughs. “Sí,” he says. “It’s very good.”

“And how’s my court?”

“You haven’t played on it yet?”

“Nope,” says Roger.

“It’s good. We should practise sometime,” says Rafa. He’s tossing the prawns in a pan over the gas flame.

“Okay,” says Roger. Rafa shoots him a grin. “Did Alessandra get you these prawns?”

“Sí, today,” says Rafa. “Maybe almost as good as Mallorca, no?”

“High praise,” says Roger.

“Hey, pass me the spaghetti.” Roger passes him a kilo pack that’s sitting on the countertop. Rafa puts salt and oil in a large pot of boiling water and dumps in the pasta, splashing water on it with a spoon to soften it down. “Stir,” says Rafa, passing him the pasta server.

It’s a domesticity Roger has not felt in a while. At some point he becomes aware that Toni has left the room and it’s just him and Rafa in the kitchen. “Is it done?” says Rafa, nodding to the pasta. He has turned the gas off under the prawns and is putting together a salad.

Roger fishes out a strand of spaghetti and tests it. “Not yet.”

“You know where is the colador?” Rafa finishes tossing the salad in dressing and starts opening cupboards and drawers.

“I have no idea,” says Roger, as Rafa searches. He watches the flex of Rafa’s thighs in his jeans when he hunches down to look in cupboards; he notices the taut stretch of his abdomen when he reaches up to check on shelves. He remembers the photographs, the curl of fingers, the spread of legs.

“I found it,” says Rafa, extracting the colander from among the pots in a drawer in the kitchen island. They are taken up then with draining the pasta and mixing it with the prawns and chili sauce, and soon the room fills up with people reaching for bowls and parmesan and clattering cutlery on the wooden table.

“You know,” says Toni, after the food is eaten and they are sitting back with glasses of water and bottles of beer, “this is a good place. You have a good home, Roger.”

“Thanks,” murmurs Roger, taking a drink of iced water. He’s driving, he said to Rafa Maymo, when he tried to pass him a beer.

“Very private. No paparazzi here, no?”

“They’re not so bad in Switzerland,” says Roger.

“That’s what we thought in Mallorca,” says Toni. “A few photos on the beach in summer, that’s all we expected.” The room becomes tense, all of a sudden, and silent. Rafa is thumbing the edge of his placemat, his eyes lowered. “So you never know,” continues Toni. 

Roger gets the sense that there’s a lot more to the conversation than he is privy to. “I guess not,” he says.

“Well, you’ve got those huge trees all around,” says Jordi. “Did you plant them or were they already here? They’re very well grown.”

Roger recognises the intentional change of subject and relates for some time the process of planting mature trees in fresh topsoil. Beside him, he feels Rafa relax, and Toni retreats under the brim of his baseball cap. He shifts his foot as if by accident and presses it briefly against the side of Rafa’s trainer. Rafa presses back. They sit like that for the rest of the evening, the feel of it catching in Roger’s mind like a current breaking against a rock, an immutable fact in the flow of conversation.

 

“I’ll come back to practise,” he says. It’s after midnight and it’s dark in the valley, the lights of houses dotting the mountainside opposite. The night is cool. Roger leans on the open door of his car.

“Okay,” says Rafa. “Tomorrow?”

Roger laughs a little. “I don’t think I can come back tomorrow. I have kids, you know.”

But Rafa is hardly listening. He shoves his hands in his pockets and half sits on the hood of the car. “Roger,” he says, seriously. “Toni, he gets sometimes this way.”

“Prickly,” says Roger. “Like a cactus.”

“Yes,” says Rafa. “Yes, this. Prickly.”

“I know, Raf,” says Roger. He leans into the corner where the door meets the car. The bright security light which has flicked on over the driveway catches in Rafa’s messy hair, lending him a slightly manic, scattered look. His eyes are dark.

“This thing, it…” He shakes his head. He’s hunched, pressing his fingers and thumb against his shut eyes.

“Hey, Rafa,” says Roger, gently. He feels the urge to reach out, to touch him. Comfort him. But something in Rafa’s crossed arms and tensed shoulders makes him pause.

“It’s okay,” says Rafa. He shakes himself, as if forcing himself to relax, and stands up straight again. “Look. It’s not gonna be your problem.” His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I guess not,” says Roger. Something in the way he says it makes Rafa look at him curiously, as if he has heard the uncertainty Roger himself feels.

Rafa steps against the door, close and calm. Not the forced calm of a moment before, but a real tranquillity visible in the softness of his eyes. “Come back soon, yes?” His fingers curl over the top of the door, the nails half-bitten and the buff worn down.

“I will,” says Roger. Suddenly, the security light clicks off and they are in almost-dark, the only illumination the dim amber light from the living room window, now shrouded in curtains.

Rafa laughs a little, and grasps Roger’s hand where he still holds the door. He entwines their fingers in a quick, tight clasp. “Good,” he says. Then he lets go and steps back. With that, the light clicks on again.

“I’ll call you to let you know when I’m coming,” says Roger.

“Okay.”

They stand there in the cold light for a moment, and then Roger gets into the car, turns, and leaves. In his rear view mirror he sees Rafa watching him until the gates close behind him.

 

The bedroom is dark and he showers and changes quietly, though he senses from her breath that Mirka is not asleep. He feels her shift as he slides into bed and he moves beside her, taking her in his arms. She turns towards him and he kisses her.

“Mirka?” he says, kissing under her jaw, his hands spreading over her body.

“Roger, stop,” she says, and he freezes, his mouth still against her skin.

“What’s wrong?” he says. He wants to fold himself against her, to take off her nightdress and push inside her. Desire is curling in his gut and he feels himself tingling at the feel of her body.

“I’m not a substitute,” she says, turning away from him, over on her side, her back to him in the darkness.

His hands drop from her waist and he stills, leaning on one elbow. “What?” he says.

“Go to sleep,” she says.

He lies down on his back, suddenly cold. He doesn’t sleep, though she does, and at four in the morning he gets up and heats two bottles, which he gives to his boys one by one, the feel of them fragile in his arms.

 

Sleeplessness leaves him tired the next day, but nevertheless he practises with an unusual intensity. Now and then Severin glances curiously across the net as Roger’s forehands go whipping by. He’s hitting shots few people on earth could hope to return.

“Everything okay, Roger?” says Severin, after another ball has gone streaking by him.

“Yeah, sorry,” says Roger. “I’ll tone it down.”

“Just keep it regular. You’re not looking to hit winners.”

Roger nods, and then for half an hour he hits like a metronome, the swing of his arm, the torque of his body the only sensations he feels.

Later, when the girls are playing in the garden with Nina, he sits on the deck to watch them.

“Hey,” says Mirka, coming up beside him. “Dinner soon.”

“Okay,” he says. “Can I help with anything?”

“It’s alright,” she says. “I’m just giving it another while to cook.” She takes a seat beside him on the deck. “So hey. I saw you practising today.”

“Yeah?” he says.

“Yeah.” She puts her elbow on the arm of her chair and rests her chin in her hand. “Pretty intense.”

“I guess,” he says. Out in the garden, Charlene is chasing Nina in circles. Myla has a ball and is throwing it high, miming a service motion with an empty hand.

“It seemed like you were looking for topspin high to your backhand.” She says it like any other observation.

“I’ve got to practise, you know.” He’s prevaricating. “In case.”

“Did he ask you to practise with him?” 

When he looks at her, she’s not accusatory. Just curious and calm. “Yeah,” he says.

“Do you want to?” she asks. “With him?”

There’s a rush of blood to his ears and he can hardly hear himself speak, as if the truth is drowning him out at last. “Yes,” he says. “I do.”

“Roger,” she says. She’s not looking at him now. Her fingers are entwined and the diamond in her wedding ring catches the falling light. “I don’t know what to do with this.”

“I know,” he says.

“Look, Daddy!” calls Myla, tossing the ball again and mimicking a serve.

“Beautiful form, sweetheart,” he says to her. Nina is clapping. “Did I ever tell you about Lucas?” he says quietly to Mirka.

“Who?”

“When I was in the tennis academy. Lucas Jaecks. We used to practise together. He could have been good, actually. But he left one weekend and never came back.”

“What are you talking about?” she says to him.

He’s been thinking about Lucas lately. Lucas had shaggy blond hair that he wore like Borg’s and he kept it off his face with a sweatband when he played. He was the one boy there who spoke Swiss German, and once, before he disappeared, he came to Roger’s room, tears in his eyes. “My father,” he said. “He’s left my mother.” He showed Roger the picture he kept, taken years before on a holiday in Monte Carlo, of the three of them standing by the shore. “All this time, he’s been having an affair,” he said, curled up on Roger’s bed. Roger didn’t know what to say. He tried to imagine his kind, honest father betraying his mother, but he couldn’t. When he looked at Lucas’s father’s face, he saw the face of a liar.

“Do you want to play a videogame?” he said instead, and Lucas looked at him, shocked for a moment, but then he dried his tears.

“Sure,” he said, shrugging. Later, after hours of Super Mario Brothers, he said to Roger, “Can I stay here tonight?”

Roger didn’t mind. He was a skinny thing and there was room in the bed for two. In the darkness, Lucas touched him, first his arm, and then, when Roger didn’t move away, he shifted closer under the duvet. He remembers the slippery, unpractised kisses, the feeling of Lucas’s hand down the front of his shorts, the sudden strangeness of coming in someone else’s hand. Every night for a week Lucas came to his room. And then he left the academy. Roger felt a sharp ache at his departure. Who would he talk to now? Who would he play videogames with? Alone in the dark he tried to recapture the sensation of another body against his, of another person’s taste in his mouth.

“I thought for years it meant nothing, you know?” he says. “Just two kids, two boys, I don’t know. Looking for something.” 

“Finding something,” she says, quietly.

“Maybe,” he says. He remembers the look on Lucas’s face that first morning when he left the room, a glance and a smile that said they had their own secret. “Now I don’t know what it means. But I know I don’t want to lie to you.”

In the kitchen, something’s beeping, calling for attention. Mirka stands up and smoothes out her top. “Then don’t,” she says to him. “Okay? Don’t lie to me.” She walks inside and he follows her. She takes something from the oven and puts it on a potstand. 

“I won’t, you know,” he says.

She’s about to say something when Myla and Charlene run into the room. The conversation is lost in the din of mealtime, and later that night, though the thread seems to hang in the air between them, neither of them takes it up again. He wakes in the night and is weighed down by the thought of what he is asking of Mirka, and then he is buoyed by the recollection of Rafa’s hand on his, of their feet pressed together under the table at Herrliberg. For hours he navigates these unfamiliar provinces of night, turning this way and that, looking for an even path through peaks and valleys to which he is unaccustomed. He cannot now pinpoint exactly when it became certain in his mind that it wasn’t just some daydream, that he really wanted Rafa. That he needed him. Perhaps the thought crystallised when he saw the photos with Marc Lopez. Perhaps it was long before that, and finally its time had come.

 

It was after the Australian Open final in 2009 that it began. Roger was in the locker room after the match, his presser over, packing his racket bag with slow precision when Rafa burst in, shouting something to his team in the corridor outside. He became quiet when he saw Roger. “Hey,” he said, smiling a little, with soft eyes.

“Hey, Raf,” said Roger. “I wanted to say to you,” he began, uncertain how to continue. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for, you know. Stealing your moment like that.”

“Roger,” said Rafa, shaking his head. “Don’t be sorry. Tennis is emotional, no? When you feel these emotions, it’s not a bad thing.” He picked up a towel and dried off his hair, still wet from the court.

“I guess that’s true,” said Roger.

“Anyway, I cried in Wimbledon 2007,” said Rafa. “It’s normal.”

“It wasn’t the same,” said Roger. “That was later, in the locker room.”

“Same emotions,” said Rafa, simply. He peeled off his shirt and shorts, and Roger looked away. He smiled a little as Rafa headed towards the showers.

The way Rafa was always at ease with his emotions was something Roger envied a little. In his youth, he had to reign in his own. Too many tantrums on the court, too many angry and tearful calls home from the academy. He sat on the bench by the lockers, remembering the flares of desperate loneliness he had to contend with as a teenager. It seemed to him that over the years it had become a different kind of solitude, the solitude he felt in front of the microphone in the Rod Laver Arena, the sorrow of loss after a bitter fight washing through him. A solitude alleviated by the crook of Rafa’s arm thrown around his shoulders, the easy touch of Rafa’s temple to his, murmuring words in front of millions meant only for him.

He was still sitting, lost in thought, when Rafa returned. “Roger?” he said. “Are you okay?”

Roger shook himself and stood up. Rafa was standing in front of him, wrapping his towel around his waist. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. I’m just thinking.”

Rafa was silent for a moment. Water dripped from the ends of his hair and glistened on his skin. He reached for another towel and scrubbed it dry, leaving it a mess on top of his head which he smoothed down with his fingers. “I mean what I say out there,” he said. “You are still the best of the history. You will get fourteen.”

“Oh, Rafa,” said Roger, a little embarrassed. It was one thing in front of the crowds. It was another here, in the intimacy of a deserted locker room.

“It’s true,” said Rafa. The memory of Rafa’s arm around him came back to Roger again. The comfort in it, the warmth. And now, once again, Rafa reached out for him, placing a hand on his shoulder, reassuring him. “Really, it’s true.”

“Raf,” said Roger, quietly. And as he said it, something changed between them, as if the very air they breathed was magnetised. Roger found himself acutely aware of the rise and fall of Rafa’s bare chest, the press of his fingers, and the dark, unguarded look in his eyes. Rafa moved closer, raising his other hand and holding Roger high on his shoulders, his fingers nearly meeting across the base of his neck.

“Rogelio,” said Rafa, so quietly that Roger barely heard it. He found himself holding on to Rafa’s arms, fingertips pressing white into his biceps. He waited, knowing what was going to happen, surprised to find he did not want to stop it. Then Rafa kissed him.

It was a soft meeting of lips, a graze of stubble, and the gentle press of Rafa’s chest against his own. Roger leaned into it, the whisper of Rafa’s breath against his cheek, the gentle pressure of his lips. It was only when he felt himself opening his mouth a little, the delicate brush of tongues, that he pulled back. He stood frozen in shock, his hands still gripped on Rafa’s arms. He struggled to speak. While he groped for words, he saw Rafa’s face change, as if what he had revealed was once more submerged.

“I can’t,” he managed to say, eventually, removing his fingers from Rafa’s arms and stepping back, out of reach.

“Oh,” said Rafa, blankly.

“Mirka’s pregnant,” said Roger. He felt clumsy, as if there was some other way to say it that he hadn’t found, a way that would make it easier, cleaner, less like an excuse or an awkward rejection.

Rafa looked surprised for a moment, and then he nodded. “I see,” he said, with a calm Roger envied.

“I’m marrying her,” he continued, blundering on. “I mean, we’re getting married.”

Rafa pressed his lips together in a small smile. “Congratulations,” he said. He even meant it, thought Roger, a little. It wasn’t in Rafa’s nature to be bitter or resentful, even if the smile fell from his face when he turned away.

Roger tried to untangle the knot in his chest as he left the locker room, but he found that he could not. He told Mirka about it later that night. “He’s in love with you,” she said.

“Do you think so?” he said. They were sitting opposite each other on the jet, the lights dimmed for night time.

“I think he has been for some time. Remember that photo after Wimbledon in 2007?”

He did. He remembered the press of Rafa’s temple against his own, Rafa’s hand gently splayed against his stomach. He still found the photo a little difficult to look at, as if it was a delicate thing caught and pinned for scrutiny it was never meant to endure. And yet, over time, he has come to consider that moment the beginning of a revelation that culminated in that locker room in Melbourne. Now, on a bright morning in Valbella, Roger’s phone vibrates in his pocket. He unlocks it and reads the text.

“It’s Rafa,” he says to Mirka, across the breakfast bar. “He’s asking me to go and practice.” It’s one of those rare mornings when the girls sleep in and the boys are yet to wake for their first bottle of the day.

Mirka slowly butters some rye bread toast. “Why did you never tell me about Lucas Jaecks before?” she asks.

“I guess I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t think it was important.”

“But now you do?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Now I do.”

 

He kisses her goodbye, slings his gear bag over his shoulder and heads out to the car. The road to Herrliberg seems short today. On the radio the DJ plays love songs all the way.

Rafa answers the door. “Hey,” he says. He’s smiling and squinting in the sunshine. “Come in.” The living room is piled with rackets and Nike gear, and there are trainers in a heap by the door leading out towards the court. Rafa is walking around in his socks. He already has his gear on for practice. “You want to change the clothes?” he says to Roger.

“Yeah,” says Roger.

“My room,” says Rafa. He leads the way, as if the house is his.

“Is everyone comfortable here?” asks Roger as they go through the basement to the guest house.

“For sure, no?” says Rafa. He is casually tactile, placing a hand on Roger’s shoulder, sweeping his palm down the length of his arm. “Toni slept late this morning. He says because of how quiet is it here.” He quirks an eyebrow and Roger laughs a little.

“And how about you?” he asks, as Rafa opens the door to the guest house. “Are you bored of the quiet yet?”

Rafa holds the door open and Roger is acutely aware of brushing against him as he passes through. “No,” says Rafa, letting the door close behind him. “No, I am not bored, Rogi.”

Roger stands in the middle of the kitchen. Through the doorway to the bedroom he can see the unmade bed, the clothes draped this way and that over the chair, and one of the dresser drawers left open. Rafa looks embarrassed for a moment and then shrugs. “Let me…” he says, going into the bedroom and sliding the drawer back into place. He rearranges the clothes on the chair until they’re all draping vaguely the same direction and flicks the duvet flat on the bed. “You can change in here,” he says, looking back at Roger, his hands on his hips.

“Okay,” says Roger. He follows Rafa into the bedroom and puts his gear bag on the ground. For a moment he wonders if Rafa is going to stay. He feels that he is staring too intently at Rafa’s face, that he is too aware that he is in his bedroom. He thinks again of the locker room in Melbourne.

Rafa breaks the moment with a small smile. “I wait for you,” he says, “out there.” He jerks his thumb back towards the living room.

Roger just nods and Rafa leaves the room, closing the door over, though leaving it a little ajar.

“So you ready to practice, Roger?” calls Rafa from the kitchen.

Roger unzips his bag and pulls out his shorts and t-shirt. “Sure,” he says.

“Good,” says Rafa, laughing. Roger can hear him warm up, sprinting in short bursts across the width of the kitchen. The sound of it brings back memories of other locker rooms, where Rafa fills the space with his physicality, warming up his body like a machine.

“Hey Raf,” says Roger. He shucks off his sweatpants and pulls on his shorts.

“Yeah?” He’s stretching out his legs now. Roger can hear him lunging one way and the other.

“Who’s your practice partner when I’m not here?” He ties the drawstring at his waist. “I mean, you didn’t bring anyone with your team, did you?”

“Carlos Costa hits with me,” he says.

“Yeah, but,” says Roger. He slips his arms into his t-shirt and pulls it over his head. “I mean, a real hitting partner. Someone you could have brought with you, you know.” He slowly pulls on his wristbands. “If you wanted.”

Rafa is suddenly silent, his warmup brought to an abrupt halt. The air has become thick. Then he says, “I have no hitting partner.” Roger can hear by his voice that he’s near the door. “I mean, not a usual one. Not serious.”

Roger is dressed and ready but he doesn’t move. “I see,” he says, carefully. He’s staring at his own sweatpants lying crumpled on Rafa’s bed.

“Is this why you come here, Roger?” Rafa slowly pushes the door open and remains standing just the other side of the threshold. His hand is splayed out against the wood, his fingers already taped. The intensity in his eyes makes Roger feel desperately fragile. He picks up his racket and grips it in his hand.

“Yes,” he says. “It is.” Rafa’s eyes widen, just a fraction. “After the pictures…” He trails away, his voice caught in his throat.

“Rafael,” then, comes a voice from outside. It’s Toni, walking past the deck outside with Rafa Maymo and Carlos Costa. “Vamonos.” They’re heading towards the courts.

“I…” says Rafa, trying to find words.

“Let’s go,” says Roger. “Let’s practice. Then, you know. We’ll see. Or talk. Whatever you want.”

“Okay,” says Rafa. There’s the trace of a smile on his face, warm, open, suffused with hope.

 

They warm up, and already Roger can tell that the court does play well. For a while they hit with steady regularity, the crack of the ball reverberating in the enclosed space between the trees. Now and then, with a bad miss, Toni says something to Rafa, who nods, and then restarts their steady beat. After a while, though, the misses fade away, and with them everything outside the lines of the court. He feels his focus narrowing down, the way it might during a match, and he catches the ball in his hand and stops.

“Hey,” he calls across the net to Rafa. “How about a set?”

Rafa grins. “Okay,” he says. “You serve.”

“Of course,” says Roger.

And they’re off. They follow form and change over after every second game, though they don’t sit down for a minute to do so. At first Rafa Maymo and Carlos Costa help retrieve the balls between games, but as the afternoon wears on and they reach 5-5, the others quietly leave the court. Toni glances back as they shut the wire mesh gate, but the look in his eyes is unreadable behind his sunglasses. Even here, the two of them alone in the mountains, Roger feels the thrill of match play snap through his body and energise his muscles, keeping him running long after he might have stopped if this was just practice back at Valbella with Severin. He can see that Rafa is feeling the same thing, and as they gather up the balls after they reach 6-6, he grins over at Roger, sweat dripping from his hair. “Tie-break?” he says.

Roger balances six collected balls on his racket. “No tie-break in the fifth,” he says, and Rafa laughs.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay,” says Roger, and he places four balls by the fence, puts one in his pocket, and throws one in the air to serve.

It’s impossible not to think of it as something like a dance. They know each other so well by now: forehands, backhands, volleys, lobs, all playing out like some perfected choreography. They reach 7-all, then 8-all, and on it goes. They’re quiet between games, though they catch each other’s eyes and smile a little. They keep playing, 9-all. Roger’s legs are tired now, and Rafa is a little slow too, yet neither of them breaks the other. At 10-all, Roger finally stops. “You know,” he calls across the net. “We’ve never been able to call it a draw.” The sun is low behind Rafa, rendering him little more than a dark shape at the opposite baseline. He appears to stop and think for a moment, and then he begins to walk towards the net.

“A draw?” he says. “Hmm.” He pretends to be considering it, but Roger can see the tension draining out of his shoulders and knows he’s decided to agree. They walk towards the net, towards each other, and as they get closer, Roger can see his face. He’s smiling. Then he throws his racket on the ground and, when they meet, he wraps Roger in his arms, burying his face against the curve of his neck. He’s still panting a little, his breath hot against Roger’s skin. Roger can feel the press of his chest when he breathes.

He lets his racket drop and he winds his arms around Rafa’s back. 

“Ohhh,” says Rafa, quietly. “This is how I always want to end.”

Roger huffs a breath against Rafa’s neck. “Yeah?” he says. “Even when I beat you?”

“Especially when you beat me,” says Rafa.

Such easy honesty. And this is it, the final moment: he could draw back now and smile fondly; he could shake his head a little, watch Rafa’s face fall, and he could go home. But everything in him rebels at letting go. It’s as if every meeting at the net, every tender, careful touch of hands and heads and bodies has erupted at once into this impossible moment. Blindly, Roger finds Rafa’s mouth with his own, and he kisses him with all the force of sudden, fierce desire. Rafa’s arms tighten around him and it almost feels like violence, this desperation with which they cling to each other at last.

After a while, it subsides enough for them to walk, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, to collect their things by the side of the court. In the cool of the early evening they walk towards the guesthouse. It’s difficult to keep a straight line. Roger grabs at Rafa’s hand and presses him against the trunk of a tree, and some time later, they stumble on, smiling with swollen lips, the taste of sweat on their tongues. Rafa winds his arm around Roger’s waist and says, “Every time I imagined this, I imagine it in Mallorca.” 

Roger presses close and kisses his cheek and answers, “To be honest, me too.” Around them the mountains fade to blue and mist rises from the grass. From the trees drifts drowsy birdsong.

“You imagined this?” says Rafa. They’re on the deck now, and Rafa is sliding open the glass doors.

“Oh, god, Rafa,” says Roger. “So many times.” He drops his bag and closes the door, pulling the curtains across against the evening twilight. He turns and looks at Rafa. “Lately, I imagine it all the time.”

Rafa is no longer smiling. It’s too much, now, for smiling. He kicks off his shoes and peels off his socks, and then pulls his shirt over his head. Roger watches him, his breath quickening, and then does the same. Then he pushes Rafa back towards the bed. Roger lies over Rafa and entwines their fingers against the pillow, and then leans down and kisses him, wet and hot. Rafa moans and his legs slide apart. Roger settles between them. For a while, that’s all it is: the banking of a blazing fire to burn it all the hotter. And then it’s not enough. Rafa pushes at Roger’s shorts, sliding them off, and turns them over until it’s Roger spread out on the sheets. The shock of Rafa’s mouth on his dick makes Roger stretch and groan and grope for Rafa’s hair, desperate to touch him or hold him there or both.

Rafa doesn’t make him come, though. Instead he pulls back and slides up Roger’s body and says to him, close and low, “I want you to fuck me.” He reaches into the bedside drawer and takes out condoms and lube.

“Jesus, Rafa,” says Roger, raggedly. “I don’t know if I’ll last that long.”

“Just fuck me, Roger,” says Rafa, kicking off his own shorts. He turns over onto his belly and raises his ass a little into the air, legs spread, eyebrows raised over dark eyes. Roger rolls on the condom and scrambles on top of him. He runs his hands over the curve of Rafa’s ass, his thumbs skimming down the cleft. Rafa spreads his legs a little further.

“Fuck,” says Roger, squeezing lube onto his fingers and watching Rafa’s eyes flutter closed as he slides them inside.

He does last. He grips Rafa’s hands against the sheets and pushes inside him, groaning against Rafa’s shoulder at the tight heat. They find their rhythm and Roger is gone, all that matters in the world in this single moment encompassed in his arms.

Rafa comes first, gasping and pushing, his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth open, his body taut and rigid as he jerks against the sheets. Roger follows moments after, his face pushed against the groove between Rafa’s shoulders. He slides out but stays folded over Rafa, gasping hotly against his back, and then seeking out his mouth again to kiss him, wet and messy. “Jesus, Raf,” he whispers.

Rafa makes a noise that is half groan, half whimper. “Roger,” he says. And then he smiles, wide and lazy, his face still half pressed into the pillow.

“Ohhh, Rafa,” says Roger, and it seems all that he needs to say for now.

Later, after they clean up, they fall into bed together again. Roger spreads Rafa out on the sheets and tastes him everywhere, pressing himself against Rafa’s body as if to commit its shapes to memory. In the almost-dark of late evening, Rafa bends Roger’s legs apart and blows him till he’s out of his mind. Through a half-drowse afterwards, he hears someone come into the kitchen of the guesthouse.

“Rafa,” comes Benito’s voice through the door. “Here’s dinner.” They hear the sound of a tray placed on the table and then the door closing again as Benito leaves.

“Do you think they all know?” says Roger.

“Sí,” says Rafa. “I think so.”

“Good,” says Roger. “I can stay till morning, then.”

Rafa grins. “Yes,” he says. “Stay.”

They eat in the small kitchen, sitting at the table with their shorts on. It’s salmon in teriyaki sauce with rice. But it’s not long before they are in bed again, lying in each other’s arms.

“Roger,” says Rafa, carefully. 

“Mmm?” He’s half asleep, drowsy and relaxed.

“What does—does Mirka know this?” He’s looking at Roger curiously, his hand spread against his chest.

Roger is taken aback for a moment. In this cocoon with Rafa, he hadn’t thought of her. There is a pang of guilt at the mention of her name. And suddenly he misses his children. Myla and Charlene would be in bed by now, and Mirka and Nina would be feeding the boys before putting them down for the night. 

Rafa presses his hand to Roger’s face, bringing him back. “Sorry,” he says. “I ask too much.”

Roger takes Rafa’s hand in his own. “No, it’s fine,” he says. “She knows.”

“And she is… she is okay?”

Roger thinks of her white-knuckled hands against the counter, her face when he left for dinner, her calm, clear eyes when she asked him that morning about Lucas Jaecks. “Maybe,” he says. “I don’t know. I hope so.” Rafa nods silently. “I think she knows how much I—” he hesitates. But then, in the dim light of the bedroom, looking into Rafa’s eyes, he continues. “I think she knows how much I need you.”

Rafa exhales, as if he had been holding a breath. He pushes his mouth against Roger’s shoulder, into his neck. “You need me,” he says. He folds himself around Roger and holds him tight.

“Yeah,” says Roger. “I think I do.” He looks Rafa in the eye. “Is that okay?”

Rafa smiles gently. He touches his fingertips to Roger’s face. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s okay.” For a moment they just look at each other, allowing the truth to settle. 

“But what about you?” says Roger, then. “What are you going to do?”

Rafa’s smile fades. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think in Canada they will ask questions, no?”

“About Marc,” says Roger.

“Yeah,” agrees Rafa. “About Marc.”

Roger runs his fingers through Rafa’s hair, then down against his back. “What are you going to say?”

Rafa shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, I will say about Marc that he is a good friend, but not my boyfriend.” He looks Roger keenly in the eye. Roger just nods. “I worry about Xisca, though. This is not easy for her.”

“Yeah,” says Roger. “Pretty tough.”

“But really—do you know?—really she is with Titín. Rafa Maymo.”

“I didn’t know that,” says Roger. “That’s good, at least. That she has someone.”

“For me, I will tell the truth,” says Rafa. “Well, the truth that I am gay. Not everything.” He presses a kiss to Roger’s shoulder. “Then play tennis, no?”

“Tennis,” says Roger, smiling. “Yeah. Do you think it’ll be weird next time we play?”

“I think every match I am looking at you, wanting you,” says Rafa, simply. “For me it will be the same.”

“Rafa,” says Roger. He turns a little so he is pressing his cock against Rafa’s hip, and folds his leg over his thighs. “We’ll find a way, right?”

“Sí,” says Rafa, settling closer, pressing their bodies together. “We will find a way.” He kisses him, insistent and deep. Roger sighs.

“This is crazy,” he says. “I can’t get enough of you.”

Rafa kisses him again and pushes him onto his back. This time it’s Roger’s legs that fall apart.

Later, spent and exhausted, he drifts off into a doze. In some unsettled half-dream it is no longer Rafa’s team inhabiting the main house, but rather Mirka, his girls and his boys. Even half asleep he senses some disjuncture, some rift between here and there that he has yet to bridge. He curls around Rafa, seeking that comfort, and when he finally falls asleep it is with the sense that at least here, at least now, everything is in its right place.


End file.
